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How To Check If Someone Is Following You on Social Media

Have you ever wanted to know who’s following you on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, or Google+? Maybe you want to know if someone in particular is following you (but remember if your account is public, anyone can see your posts whether they’re following you or not). Bloggers who host giveaways often want to verify whether a winner is following a particular account to ensure they’re eligible to win a prize. I always check, and along the way I’ve learned a few tricks to do this as efficiently as possible. Here are the easiest ways I’ve found to see if someone is following you on social media.

How to Check if Someone is Following You on Social Media - This West Coast Mommy

Yes, I know that there are dozens of social media sites and apps, but here I’m only going to look at the ones I actually use. Sorry tumblr, Periscope, Snapchat, Vine, et al!

Facebook

Facebook changes its functionality all the time, but currently, the easiest way to check your followers on Facebook is through your page settings. Click on Settings at the top of the page.

In your Settings, click on People and Other Pages in the left sidebar.

This opens up a list of everyone who has liked your page, in chronological order. Here’s where you can search for a particular follower’s name. Be aware it can take a while, especially if you have a lot of followers.

Note that people who have set their security settings to keep their “likes” private will not show up in search results. So if someone’s name is not in the results that DOES NOT necessarily mean that they’re not followers.

Twitter

You already know that you can see whether someone is following you by going to their Twitter account. You’ll see this info even on accounts where the tweets are protected.

But have you ever wanted to know if someone is following someone else? Doesfollow is a simple and free tool that does just that. You can easily see whether any account is following any other account. Just input the usernames (without the @ symbol) and press the question mark button. For bloggers, this is an easy way to verify if your contest winner is following the sponsor’s Twitter account.

doesfollow screen

Instagram

If you have just a few dozen followers, it’s easy enough to click on your list of followers and scroll down. But what if you have a few hundred, or a few thousand?

Luckily, it’s easy to see if someone is following you. Log in to your Instagram account on mobile and go to the account you’re checking up on. Look for the wide button next to their photo. If it says Follow Back, then that account follows you (and you don’t follow them). If it says Message, then you follow each other.

Instagram recently introduced new functionality that makes it really simple to see if an account is following someone else too. Go to the account and click on Following to bring up their list of accounts they follow. Enter the handle in question in the search bar at the top. If you find the handle name on the list, then you know this account is following. Unfortunately, you can’t search private accounts unless you’re already a follower.

Pinterest

When it comes to Pinterest, I haven’t been able to figure out any way to see who follows me other than manually. Go to your Pinterest page and click on Followers to see them all in the order of which they started following you, most recent at the top. Scroll down and search for the follower’s user name using your browser’s search function (Ctrl+F for Windows or Command+F for Macs).

Unfortunately, this isn’t a realistic option for accounts with thousands and tens of thousands of followers. An alternate method is to look at the other person’s Following list and search for your name on their list. That’s the option I go with if the other person is following less than a few hundred pinners.

If anyone knows of an easier way to check followers on Pinterest, please let me know!

YouTube

To see your followers on YouTube, click on your picture in the top right which will open a drop down box with the Creator Studio button in the middle. Click the button, then once on the Creator Studio page, click on the Community label in the menu on the left side of your page, then select Subscribers. Alternatively, if you’re already logged in to your YouTube account, you can go directly to https://www.youtube.com/subscribers where you’ll find your list of public subscribers. Again, as far as I know there is no way to go through your subscriptions other than manually. Use Ctrl+F to search for a particular follower’s name.

YouTube

Google+

I freely admit that Google+ has always been kind of confusing to me. The best that I can figure out, your followers are the equivalent of people who have you in circles. To see this, select People in the drop down menu on the left hand side and select the Have you in circles link at the top of the People page, or go directly to https://plus.google.com/u/0/people/haveyou if you’re logged in. At this point you’re stuck scrolling down and using Ctrl+F to search, which isn’t a great option if you have thousands of followers.

Googleplus

The other problem with this method is that the number of people who have you in circles always seems to be a few off from the Followers number you see on your Profile page. I don’t know why that is and who’s missing, and after doing some research of my own, it doesn’t appear that anyone else knows either. If anyone has a better method, please let me know!

 
I hope these tips were helpful! If you have any tips or tricks of your own for checking social media followers, please share with us in the comments.

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12 Comments

  • I never realized what a pain it was to verify followers. This sounds like a lot of no fun to me. Lol. As for Google Plus, when I follow people on mobile it only gives me an option to “follow” not “add to circle”. I think adding someone to a circle is just a way for the user to group the people that they follow. So a person could be following you, but you may not necessarily be in one of their circles. I agree that Google Plus is pretty confusing.

    • Interesting! On the full website, I must select a circle to add someone to before I can follow. Maybe those mystery people followed on mobile. Thanks for the suggestion!

      • I’ve done it both ways. I used to always enter my giveaways on my laptop and then, yes, it asks to add to a circle. But now I pretty much only do so from my phone and it doesn’t seem to give me that option. Just a button to click that says “follow”. Once I click it then it says “following” but I don’t see an option to add to circle, though I haven’t investigated it too much. I’m sure there is a way to add to circles on mobile, but most people are not going to take those extra steps (if they even exist). Back when I was using desktop more, my circles were something like: friends, family, acquaintances, and the other one I think was called following. So it seems that maybe “following” is actually a name of a circle as well? Darn you, Google Plus and your mysterious ways. πŸ˜›

  • I get confused on enteries that let you visit a facebook page. Thanks to a hacker, I no longer have fb. However, on some giveaways, you have the option to visit a fb page to get credit. I can most always summit and claim. However, am I getting credit or am I claiming an entry that I do not deserve? Because through many giveaways, I can visit a fb page, but of course it will not let me like or leave a comment on the fb page.
    Since I was blessed with the lovely hacker (grrr), I am learning that most giveaways are not friendly to those who do not have fb, instagram or twitter.

    • You’re right, the purpose of many giveaways is to increase exposure and engagement on social media so they are designed for people on social media. Mine always have entries that don’t require FB/Twitter/IG, but people who do can get extra optional entries if they choose to follow. I think if the entry says to visit a Facebook page and you do, then you’ve fulfilled the letter of the law. Of course we would prefer that when people visit a FB page and like what they see, that they’ll also “like” the page and/or leave a comment, but we can’t require that.

      Have you talked to FB about getting your account back? If you can’t, you could start a new account and ask your friends to dump your old profile and switch to your new one.

      • Thank you for the response. I appreciate you.
        Actually it was facebook who contacted me when someone hacked into my account. They said they blocked it for my safety and requested a copy of my drivers licenses in order to have it unblocked. My husband does not feel comfortable with that. So no I will not be emailing that to them.
        As far as opening a new account, Im afraid they would still want the drivers lic. … I had my fb account for several years , I dont know what their rules are for opening a new account. Im sure the rules have changed after all those years.
        I do have youtube and pinterest accounts and visit them often. But that doesnt help with giveaways that require fb, twitter and/or instagram. lol.
        Regardless, I will continue to visit the bloggers sites that I enjoy reading. The giveaways are just a fun bonus πŸ™‚ I have bought several items that I learned of from different bloggers pages. Mostly baby items that I had never seen or heard of before.
        Thanks again, I appreciate it.

        • No problem, love having you! FYI, I recently helped someone set up a new FB account and all she needed was an email address. No driver’s license or ID. It would need to be a different email than your other account, so if you didn’t already have a second email account it takes about 30 seconds to get a free gmail or hotmail email. Hope that helps! πŸ™‚

  • Thank you for this very informative post. This will help me to know about who is following me and If I am, indeed, following someone. I would like more informative posts like this one. Thank you so much.